Sunday, September 21, 2008

Seelan Palay: As far as I checked, there wasn't any article following up on the issue in today's (Sept 20th) Straits Times. There was a letter published in the forum section though, from an Indian man who was very against the idea of the speech and actually praised the police for acting well. I will respond to that in my next blog post.

Below is an article featured in the Japanese press and a report on what happened on Friday at Speakers' Corner by the Singapore Democrats.

Singapore's use of Japanese on signboards in an apparent bid to lure more Japanese tourists has roused concern among some ethnic Indians who make up almost 10 percent of the city-state's citizens, with some feeling snubbed at the exclusion of their native language Tamil.

The city-state has four official languages -- English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil -- to accommodate its multiethnic population, which is majority Chinese with sizeable Malay and Indian minorities.

Signs are mostly in English, which is the administrative and working language.

But government offices often convey policy information in the four languages and announcements for passengers at commuter train stations are delivered in the four languages, one after the other.

And all Singaporean students are required to study their native languages in school, in addition to English.

In recent years, however, multilingual signs have mushroomed at Changi international airport and at tourist hotspots bearing only three of those four languages plus Japanese, with Tamil not among them.

The increasing appearance of such signs is widely seen as a deliberate policy to make Singapore more tourist-friendly to non-English speakers, including Japanese.

Last year, Japan was Singapore's sixth largest source of tourists after Indonesia, China, Australia, India and Malaysia.

Thamiselvan Karuppaya, a 40-year-old ethnic Indian real estate agent, applied to speak Friday on the issue at Speakers' Corner, a park in Singapore's financial and business district that has been designated since 2000 by the government as a venue for citizens to air grievances.

But he had to abandon his plan after the police objected on ground the issue touches on racial sensitivities.

Singapore forbids speakers at the park from touching on race and religion for fear it might ignite tension among the races in the wealthy Southeast Asian state, which though peaceful now, saw violent riots between Chinese and Malays in the 1960s.

Karuppaya's friend Rethinam Sabapathy, 51, told Kyodo News that some street signs near the country's biggest Hindu temples also fail to use Tamil.

"All this doesn't make sense. It's a mistake. They are trying to attract more Japanese by using Japanese language for the signboards. But as Tamil speakers, we have a slight feeling of 'unwantedness' creeping into us," Sabapathy said.

"The Japanese are very nice people known for manufacturing good cameras and for their sumo wrestlers, but it's wrong to put up Japanese language because they come here to get the real multicultural flavor of Singapore," he said.

In response to inquiries from Kyodo News, Rebecca Lim, deputy director for Infrastructural Development at the Singapore Tourism Board, said multilingual signs in Singapore are meant to serve the needs of tourists, especially those who are non-English speakers.

She said the agency encourages multilingual signs that "take into consideration the needs of our non-English speaking visitors from key visitor-generating markets such as Indonesia, Malaysia, China and Japan."

This is why Chinese, Malay and Japanese were added to English for signs at the Changi Airport, she said in an email response to Kyodo.

Aside from the signboard issue, Sabapathy, who works as a horticulturalist, said ethnic Indians do not feel marginalized as the government does promote their native language by ensuring the continuance of a Tamil newspaper, the state-run broadcasting station runs a Tamil radio channel and brochures explaining government policies also include Tamil.

Singapore's local population of 3.6 million is made up of 2.7 million ethnic Chinese, 491,000 ethnic Malays and 313,000 ethnic Indians.

If foreigners working in the state are included, Singapore's population is 4.6 million.

In a statement Friday, Singapore police said they have informed Karuppaya the issue he was planning to raise in his speech "is a sensitive one impinging on race."

"Singapore is a multi-ethnic society and maintaining community harmony is a key imperative that we must not take for granted," it said.

Japan was once the shining star of Singapore tourism but it has in recent years been overshadowed by tourists from emerging Asian economies flocking to Singapore in ever greater numbers due to buoyant economies and a boom in low-cost airlines.

Some 594,000 Japanese visited Singapore last year -- a far cry from 10 years ago when more than 1 million Japanese visitors swamped Singapore annually.

Singapore, which last year attracted more than 10 million visitors, is in a major drive to woo even more tourists.

It is building two multibillion-dollar integrated resorts with casinos that are expected to be ready some time next year, while it will be launching the world's first Formula One night motor racing on its streets next on Sept. 28.

"I think we better leave this place now before pictures of us appear in the Straits Times tomorrow," the man in his 40s told the rest of the group of about ten bystanders in Tamil as he quickly made his exit down the escalator leading to the Clarke Quay MRT station.

He was obviously referring to a photographer from the newspaper who was inching his way closer to the group with his zoom lens trained on them.

The group was engaged in an animated conversation at the Speakers' Corner, expecting to hear a talk on the use of Tamil in public signs.

The event that was publicized through SMS messages was to have started at 6.00 pm yesterday. But the police stopped it at the last minute when they refused to give a licence to the organizer under the Public Entertainment and Meetings Act.

Despite the cancellation, close to fifty people at different times turned up hoping to see and hear firsthand what was happening there.

Except for a couple of local reporters, one from the Straits Times and the other from MediaCorp, and an equal number of activists, none dared to step on the grass field. Most were seen seated in small groups on the benches dotting the footpath of the Park, engaged in the common topic of the status of the Tamil language in Singapore.

The Tamil language issue was chosen for airing by a real estate agent and his ten friends after the government said it was relaxing rules at the speakers' corner from the 1st of this month.

The organizer was peeved by the exclusion of Tamil on the signages at Changi Airport and directional signboards all over the island.

As part of the relaxation, the government said the National Parks Board (NParks) and not the police will handle all applications from people to speak or demonstrate at the Speakers' Corner.

Since his permit was not approved, the organizer was not around at the park yesterday.

A group of five youths who said they were students from the National University of Singapore (NUS) came not knowing that the cancellation of the event was already reported in the papers.

One of them, after reading the newspaper report commented: "Why ban it? Language is nothing to do with race or religion, the taboo subjects that cannot be raised at Speakers' Corner."

"So it is not NParks that approves and it's still the police. What a joke!" another student quipped.

Sitting on one of the benches with three of his friends in another corner of the park, a man in his 60s was speaking passionately about the issue.

He said: "I kept contacting the leading personalities in the Tamil language and literary circles since this morning for their stand on the issue. They kept pushing me from one to the other. None was prepared to have an opinion on the issue,"the man said in disgust.

"Even the Indians leaders in the PAP are afraid to raise this issue," added his friend.

In the meanwhile, those who have read about the cancellation and others who had not seen it strolled into the Park only to be told of the denial of permit by the few who remained there.

At about 9.00 pm, a man in his 50s with his family, including two teenage children, walked in but soon left disappointed. The Speakers' Corner managed yet again to retain serenity and quiet.

Your topic is very nice.Tamil language is one of the popular language which is widely used in Singapore, Southern India etc. Tamil hies try is very popular and temple and more places is femaissTamil is good language.Learning Tamil letters is simple with the read,written and speak is very easy in Tamil.So Tamil using more places.